Earlier today ***Ben|http://www.theholtsite.com*** posted a little essay contest. While talking about his newly purchased iMac he mentioned that it came with an iPod Mini that would be surpurflous in his household. He suggested an essay contest to determine a new home for the little Mini. Tongue-in-cheek as it may have been, I decided that it would be worth the required 1000 words if there was a chance of scoring an iPod.

There were two essay topics to choose from: “Why Macs are near and dear to my heart” and “Steve Jobs is a Hottie”. I chose the latter. So, for your reading enjoyment I have encluded the entire essay here. Just click to read the full article!

Why Steve Jobs is a HOTTIE
~by Rebecca A. Wood
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[David Weinberger](http://www.hyperorg.com/) [recently wrote in his blog](http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/004138.html):

But we’re now well past the point where any of us can keep up with all the blogs worth reading from the people worth keeping up with. Even with an aggregator.

I just can’t do it any more.

I can understand David’s frustrations. I can even identify with them. To wit, I don’t actually read David’s blog at all – I read about this particular [post](http://www.universalhub.com/node/1255) at [Universal Hub](http://www.universalhub.com/), a Boston-area community and news website. But rather than simply giving up, I’ve taken steps to solve the problem.
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Thanks to an ***entry|http://drbacchus.com/wordpress/?p=972*** at Richard Bowen’s ***journal|http://drbacchus.com/journal/***, I’ve been introduced to the writing of ***Marc Prensky|http://www.marcprensky.com/***. In particular, I’m fascinated by his “classic” two-part essay on “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants”. To boil it down, “Digital Natives” are those people who have grown up surrounded by technology, and are “fluent” in the language. “Digital Immigrants” are the older generation who have not been surrounded by technology for their whole lives. These two articles help to put a face and a name to an issue that I have thought about quite a bit.
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I’m certainly not the biggest ***Bloglines|http://www.bloglines.com/*** subscriber – from what I’ve read, some users have over 1000 feeds on their blogrolls. My blogroll numbered at a slightly more modest 244. Until today, when I decided to put it on a diet. Now there are only 198 feeds on my blogroll. I’ve removed redundant news sources, eliminated blogs that are rarely updated, axed blogs whose posts I simply didn’t like reading, and consolidated blogs where an aggregated source was available (e.g. ***Planet Mozilla|http://planet.mozilla.org/*** or ***Planet Movable Type|http://planet.movalog.com/***).

I’m still working on cutting some of the fat and not only on the blog but on myself, I just started a new diet I found on this blog Jenny craig vs nutrisystem which one should you buy. There are blogs that I’ve kept around ‘just in case’ something interesting pops up… but I’ll probably let them go. One thing I’m trying to convince myself of is that I simply don’t need to be the first person to hear about news… I’m going to try to be happy just reading news from a second or third tier reporting site, rather than subscribing to all of the ‘important’ first tier bloggers. So here’s to a slimmer blogroll, less compulsive blogroll checking, and more free time.

One of our must-have PowerBook accessories is the ***RoadTools|http://www.roadtools.com/*** ***Traveler CoolPad|http://gallery.prwdot.org/grab_bag/P1020716***. This is a hard plastic pad designed to be placed under your laptop. It has a two-plate pivoting design, so that your laptop can easily be swiveled from side to side for enhanced viewing. The pad also raises your laptop to a comfortable viewing/typing angle, and increases airflow around your laptop so that it doesn’t run too hot. It comes in a slim design so that you can easily slide it into your laptop case. The Traveler also has a bigger cousin, the Podium, which is designed for more permanent fixtures like desks or presentation stands.

Recently, the pivot screw on our Traveler had been coming loose. This caused the pad to occasionally slip apart when the laptop was sitting on it. Luckily we never had any serious damage, but it was pretty annoying. Well, I decided to write in to RoadTools about it. I quickly received a response from Jim MacEachern at RoadTools, telling me that he thought I needed a new CoolPad. He said that he’d send one out the next day if I’d just provide a mailing address! Well, my ***new CoolPad|http://gallery.prwdot.org/grab_bag/P1020717*** arrived today, and I couldn’t be happier. The new model has an improved design that pivots more easily and doesn’t seem to come loose. It also has a more ***aggressive tilt|http://gallery.prwdot.org/grab_bag/P1020719*** than the previous model, allowing for better positioning of the laptop and improved airflow.

Anyway, I’m impressed with RoadTools’ customer service. Maybe there’s something about New England companies – RoadTools is located in New Hampshire, and like the Maine-based ***LL Bean|http://www.llbean.com/***, they offer lifetime warranties on all of their products. (LL Bean is known for doing free repairs on boots that are decades old. They’ll also do things like replace zippers free of charge.) I’m certain the reason that RoadTools was willing to send me a new CoolPad on good faith alone is that they wish to build a good reputation, and are counting on the fact that I’ll spread the word about them to help grow their business. And they’re right – I’ll heartily recommend their products to anyone with a laptop.

***Check out RoadTools!|http://www.roadtools.com/***

Last night, as ***some|http://www.techpopuli.net/news/04/001076.html*** ***people|http://offonatangent.blogspot.com/2005/04/comcast-internet-was-down-hard.html*** noted, ***Comcast|http://www.comcast.net/*** high speed internet had an outage. Smartypants techie guy that I am, I realized that the ‘internet’ was not ‘down’, per se, but rather that Comcast’s DNS servers were acting up. Some people have solved this problem by putting in other DNS server addresses, like 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2. I took another approach – I set up our Macs to be their own DNS servers. Here’s how.
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My Workstation
Originally uploaded by PeterWood.|fff

Our KVM puzzle is finally complete, now that we’ve got a mouse that works with the KVM. We ended up getting an ***AOpen Five-Button Optical Wheel Mouse|http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=26-156-007&depa=0*** for $11.24 from NewEgg. I was led to believe from the product description that it was a PS/2 only mouse, but, in fact, it was a USB mouse with a PS/2 adapter, just like the previous Microsoft mouse that we tried to use. This mouse, however, works with no problems. So we’ve been able to ditch the dedicated mice, and we now have a fully-KVMed setup – one keyboard, one mouse, and one monitor for two computers. w00t!

The mouse, by the way, is a great value. You can feel that the plastic used in its construction is pretty cheap when compared to a MS mouse, but it’s still very useful. In Mac OS X, we can use the excellent ***USB Overdrive|http://www.usboverdrive.com/*** tool to gain access to all of the buttons on the mouse. So I have the two extra ‘side’ buttons mapped to volume up and volume down, which is incredibly useful.

The photo in this post shows what our complete workstation setup looks like. If you click the photo, you should be taken to a flickr page with annotations describing all of the various system components. Enjoy!

The USB card reader that ***I recently purchased|http://prwdot.org/archives/002437.html*** is on the whole very handy. It’s small, light, portable, and has four slots which collectively handle six different types of cards. There is a LED light to indicate card access in each slot, and an additional light to indicate that it is receiving USB power. However, in my opinion, it has a design flaw.

This is what it looks like operating under normal circumstances:

ggg|grab_bag/P1010010|Normal circumstances|ggg

This is what it looks like when I’ve put the Mac to sleep:

ggg|grab_bag/P1010009|Sleeping|ggg

Yikes! I have to unplug that thing when I put the Mac to sleep before I go to bed. Otherwise, it lights up the whole apartment!

Anyone who’s in the market for a new mouse, whether for a Mac or a PC, should check out this deal. CompUSA is ***offering the Microsoft Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer for $14.95|http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=316297&pfp=SEARCH&tabtype=rb***, for this week only (April 3 – 9). This is only for the “Crimson Flame” colored model. The mouse’s retail price is normally $49.99 (at places like Staples, for example), and CompUSA is currently carrying it at a discounted $29.99, but this week only is slashing another 50% off of the price.

I actually purchased this mouse today, not because I was in the market for a new mouse, but because I am in the market for a mouse that is compatible with the ***TrendWare KVM|http://www.trendnet.com/products/TK-206i.htm*** which we ***recently acquired|http://prwdot.org/archives/002459.html***. This mouse has a USB -> PS/2 converter, which in theory would allow it to work with the KVM, which only has PS/2 ports. Well, it did sort of work – but unfortunately there is some issue that causes the KVM to drop every other mouse click. Very annoying. I know it’s not a problem with the mouse itself, because it worked flawlessly when I connected it directly via USB to both our Mac and our PC. So, I took it back to CompUSA, since I already have two working mice, and I don’t really need a third one – just one that works with the KVM. For now, we’ll continue having two separate mice hooked up to each computer… but obviously this defeats the “M” part of “KVM”. I’m going to contact TrendWare to ask about PS/2 adapter compatability. It may simply be that the KVM doesn’t work 100% with PS/2 adapters. Oh well. Update: I’ve confirmed by searching TrendWare’s support database that the TK-206i KVM does not work with USB->PS/2 adapters. So if we want it to work, we’ll have to use a genuine PS/2 mouse. Anybody have one they’d like to donate?

In any case, it is a very nice mouse if you’re hooking it directly up to a Mac or a PC. The wireless feature is not the Bluetooth kind, but rather the old-fashioned 27MHz radio frequency kind… but it still works very well. Highly recommended.

The ***Boston Weblogger Meetup|http://blog.meetup.com/3/events/4246334/*** is tonight at 7 p.m., Christopher’s, Porter Square, Cambridge. I’ll be there.

Notes on the evening
In convenient, easy to write, easy to parse bulleted form.

Getting to the meeting:

• Left home at around 6:05 p.m.
• Lots of rain and poor visibility made driving slow. Route 128 South was packed. I-93 South was better. Route 16 to Alewife was fine. Tractor trailers throw lots of water up from the road.
• Alewife station is very leaky. I spotted at least 12 buckets on the floor to catch water dripping from the ceiling. On the upside, at least the buckets give you some idea of where water is dripping from, so that you don’t have to get wet.
• Just missed an inbound train at Alewife, so I had to wait about 10 minutes to catch the next one.
• Arrived at Porter Square at about 7:15 p.m.

In attendance:

• ***Brad|http://www.bradsearles.com/***
• ***Steve G.|http://www.stevegarfield.com/***
• Clair Degutis
• Donna
• ***Sooz|http://www.sooz.com/***
• ***Steve W.|http://www.tiac.net/~sw/***
• ***Jack|http://www.jackhodgson.com/***
• Guy who wasn’t on the RSVP List, and therefore I don’t have a reference for his name.

My table mates and their food:

• Me: English Burgah (bacon cheeseburger on an English muffin), pub fries, water with lime. Delicious.
• Sooz: Roquefort Burgah, pub fries, can’t recall the drink
• Steve: Fettucini with Salmon, glass of red wine
• Brad (for a bit): can’t recall the drink
• Mr. No RSVP (after Brad left): Newcastle Ale (Note to self: remembered name of drink, but didn’t remember name? Try harder next time!)

Conversation Topics:

• Omega-3 Fatty acids and animal testing (Re: Steve’s choice of salmon)
• ***WhizSpark|http://www.whizspark.com/*** – event planning and interaction
• ***Peter Caputa|http://worcester.typepad.com/pc4media/*** (creator of WhizSpark) and the far-too-large graphic on the top of his TypePad blog.
• Sooz’s ***new office space|http://www.sooz.com/archives/2005/01/office_space.php*** in Somerville.
• Use of content management systems for non-blogging purposes (i.e., for actual content management). Recommended ***WordPress|http://wordpress.org/*** for its ease of installation, small size, “Pages” feature. Use of CMS’s as a place to keep track of ‘stuff.’
• Blogging has created a new standard for website design and development. Similar to when word processing made typeface printing accessible to home users, systems like Blogger and TypePad have made it possible to create a quasi-professional looking site with a minimum of technical expertise. Those who want to excel must work harder to find ways to differentiate themselves from the standard-template crowd.

Heading Home

• Left the meetup at around 8:50 p.m.
• Walked past the commuter rail train at the Porter Square station while heading down to the subway. That train is really, really loud in the small, enclosed tunnel that it pulls through. Deafening, really.
• Drive home was much easier than the drive down, but no less rainy.
• Arrived home at around 9:50 p.m.